Very nice indeed!

I'd add to Magnus's thoughts the following:

* By combining tags with categories in search we can achieve "subgrouping" without actually going through tags and doing categories all over again. Then we can use parent and sub-categories for "see also", "did you mean.." or "narrow your search" etc.

* We should certainly allow for multiple values per language. Other than the reasons mentioned by Magnus there's the fact that names of people and places in non-Latin-script languages are sometimes transliterated in several ways, and the opposite is true. We could make one tag only visible (article title on WP?) and hide the other variants (redirects on WP).

* For searches that need disambiguation, we can use something like "clarify your search" used on iStockphoto.

My hopes rest with our valued coders to turn this into reality. It will make life on Commons a whole lot easier.

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 7:06 PM, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Krinkle <krinklemail@gmail.com> wrote:
> Op 29 okt 2010, om 15:29 heeft Magnus Manske het volgende geschreven:
>
>> On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Gerard Meijssen
>> <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hoi,
>>> Typically I am happy with hacks but this is an exception. The
>>> terminology
>>> used in the categories are not optimal. The use of plural, the use
>>> of latin
>>> names for organisms.. It is better for people to add new tags because
>>> otherwise they think "it has to be like that".
>>
>> Not sure I understand. My hack is using the category /system/, not the
>> existing categories. Each tag is a special new category like
>> [[Category:TAG:Flower]].
>>
>> It's not pretty, and a dedicated extension like Krinkle's is much
>> better, but it works right now, and has the pleasant side effect that
>> it can be queried for both tags and categories simultaneously, if
>> desired (e.g. tag X in category tree Y).
>>
>
> A very basic UI concept:
> http://toolserver.org/~krinkle/MWTags/
> (not functional)

Nice!

Random thoughts:
* Since the changes will be very limited (add a line or two at most,
or change one), summary could be generated automatically
* Likewise, a "minor" distinction wouldn't apply, clearing the
interface even more
* IMHO tags should be forced case-insensitive, at least during search,
maybe even force lowercase in the entry form?
* flickr has "machine tags" like "group:key=value". Should we plan for
that as well?
* Allow for multiple values per language to catch synonyms?
* Same for common typos, like on en.wp?
* Upon search, show other tags commonly used with pages in the
results, for easy refinement

Also, should we somehow encode tag "subgroupings"? I know that sounds
like it's getting us back to the category system, but tagging an image
only as "mare" will not show it when searching for "horse". We'd have
to add lots of tags, which is basically no problem, but hard to do
consistently, meaning we'll miss some. Associating "Mare" with "Horse"
(no tree structure, more like a "see also") could then
* for a search, give a list of "see also" (tag cloud?)
* auto-branch into associated tags if the original search fails (a
smarter variant of "did you mean...")

Magnus

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